These steroids trials are beginning to feel like a match-up of Royals vs. Yankees, with government lawyers representing the small-market underdogs and the accused's attorneys playing the role of the big-money team that can buy its way out of mistakes.

Overmatched lawyers is the best explanation I can come up with for the not-guilty verdicts on all six perjury-related counts in the government's case against Roger Clemens.

I still believe Clemens took performance-enhancing drugs, but I don't fault the jury for letting him off. I just believe Clemens' well-paid legal team beat the government.

Government lawyers were counting on Andy Pettitte's testimony but it ended up huring their side. They should not have been surprised, though, because what Pettitte said at the trial about Clemens and HGH was no more unclear than when Pettitte was questioned in 2008.

The defense also must have convinced jurors that Clemens' former trainer, Brian McNamee, was not as credible a witness as the government needed him to be.

After reading accounts of the trial on those two days of testimony, I started to get the feeling that Clemens would not be found guilty.

When the jury reached its verdict on Monday afternoon after only 10 hours of deliberating, I figured there was no way it had found him guilty.

Of course, being found not guilty in a court of law does not mean Clemens is innocent in the court of public opinion.

While the prosecution failed to convince the jury, it convinced me that Clemens' DNA was indeed found on steroids paraphernalia kept all those years in a beer can by McNamee. The way I see it, McNamee had no reason to lie and no reason to subject himself to this case if he wasn't telling the truth.

As a Hall of Fame voter, I cast ballots for players with Cooperstown credentials unless I am absolutely sure they took performance-enhancing drugs.

I don't see Clemens getting my vote, no matter what his lawyers were able to accomplish in the legal arena.